To stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver moon

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

-Orian Mountain Dramer

Passing tests doesn’t begin to compare with searching and inquiring and pursuing topics that engage us and excite us. That’s far more significant than passing tests and, in fact, if that’s the kind of educational career you’re given the opportunity to pursue, you will remember what you discovered. — Noam Chomsky

Trust, so that you can dare.

You must laugh because laughter heals pain.
You must love because love alone creates joy.
You must rest so that when you open your eyes, you can live awake.
You must pray so that you can run with strength.
You must write because escape lies in stories.
You must explore because exploration keeps your heart alive to the magic of life.
You must learn so that you return different than you left.
You must smile because smiling brightens the world and your view of it.
You must endure so that you can conquer.
You must trust so that you can dare.
And you must breathe, because both pain and time pass.

-From the wonderful pen of Liz Patterson

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

— Kurt Vonnegut

You are so young; you stand for beginnings. I would like to beg of you, dear friend, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will, gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. Perhaps you are indeed carrying within yourself the potential to visualize, to design, and to create for yourself an utterly satisfying, joyful, and pure lifestyle. Discipline yourself to attain it, but accept that which comes to you with deep trust, and as long as it comes from your own will, from your own inner need.

— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

This new year, tell me,

What is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

(the summer day / Mary Oliver)

"I do dare to live a life of extravagant happiness. I will love so fiercely, live so much gladness, that everyone will think that it isn’t fair.
But I will cherish this happiness, and not guilt myself into giving it up because other people don’t have it. No, instead I will find ways to make that happiness for other people, pouring it into every corner that I visit, fearlessly showing my loved ones that I care, allowing my sympathies to be stricken into helping my fellow men with everything inside of me.
But I will not give up my high ground, and sink into despondency. The world needs a higher ratio of happiness to depression, and I will be among the happy. Just my very joyful presence will lighten the load of the overburdened, terrible, broken world.
I do dare to live a life of extravagant happiness."

--Gray

Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven’t the answer to a question you’ve been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you’re alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.

— Norton Juster

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity." —Gilda Radner

I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don’t want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift.

— Shauna Niequist

of green beans and pioneers.

This year I've been teaching piano, working in awana, and babysitting on a regular basis, which means I've gotten a lot of awesome kid quotes. Here are some of my favorites from this week...

Me: If you have three notes altogether, it's a 3rd. What do you think it is when you have 2 notes together?

K: Um...a twoth?

......

Me: Who knows what a hymnal is?

B: It's a book they sang out of in like, the pioneer days.

......

Ruby: I'm a baby goose. You're the momma goose.

Me: Ruby, can you stand up?

Ruby: No say baby goose.

Me: Stand up, baby goose!

>obligingly stands up<

......

Me: Hey guys, if you eat your green beans, it will make me really, really happy.

>Ruby immediately eats like 5 beans<

Ruby: Did I make you happy?

If we could analyze the influences that build up a godly character to maturity, we might well find that the agencies which we call natural vastly outweigh the supernatural. The book of Proverbs reassures us that this, if it is true, is no reflection on the efficacy of God's grace, for the hard facts of life, which knock some of the nonsense out of us, are God's facts and His appointed school of character; they are not alternatives to his grace, but means of it; for everything is of grace, from the power to know to the power to obey. -Derek Kidner

Forever and Allways

There's this sticky note on our refrigerator that my little brother wrote.

If you can't read it, it says "ALLWAYS BE HAPPY"

He wrote it one day when someone was in a bad mood. I thought it was really cute - and sweet. :) But it also made me think. I love how he spelled "always": ALLWAYS, with two L's, making it like "all-ways"

Here is a list of the different meanings the word "always" can have.

• Seemingly without interruption
• often and repeatedly
• at any time or in any event
• forever
• throughout all time
• at all times
• all the time and on any occasion
  

When we say "always", do we really mean in all our ways? In every single thing we do? A lot of times we just see it as...well, "always". It has less depth to it the way we use it most of the time.

"I always do it this way!"
"You always are teasing me!"
"I always thought you were afraid of me"

It's another one of those words that are thrown around a lot. Does it bug you that such huge, universal words with such depth are used so flippantly? Love, joy, never, always, Jesus....the list goes on.

But take it with some more depth here.

...giving thanks [always] for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 5:20)

Where "always" is in brackets, read it again, but put in "in all your ways".

giving thanks [in all your ways] for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 5:20)

Always: In all your ways, meaning in whatever situation you encounter - choosing to rejoice, to joy in the Lord (Hab. 3),

Then I thought of another thing. You've probably heard the phrase "forever and always". I always thought it was kind of redundant..."forever and always".

(Let me rabbit trail a bit here and note how I used "always" in that sentence. I did it without even thinking. It's interesting, isn't it?)

But if you change it to "forever and allways", you get something different - not just forever and forever - forever and in every way. We should love God not only in all our ways, in everything we do, but forever. And God loves us and cares for us in the exact same way - forever and allways.

Flute Nerds Unite

FLUTE: "A sophisticated pea-shooter with a range up to five hundred yards and deadly accuracy in close quarters. Blown transversely to confuse the enemy, it can be dismantled into three small pieces for easy concealment." - David W. Barber

Wisdom From The Inside Lid Of A Peppermint Box

No matter where you stand in your business, career, or life (and no matter what challenges you now face), when you make the conscious decision to become a person of action (rather than being indecisive) you instantly turn the tide of life in your favor. -Andrew Wood

Yes, this was printed on the lid of a tin of peppermints. They were organic peppermints, if you were wondering. St. Claire's Certified Organic Allergen-Free Vegan Purely Delicious Herbal Peppermint Breath Mints.

(that was off the front)

And now I've destroyed the very poetic effect of the quote and the title. So go read it again.